In a troubling study, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that young people with type 2 diabetes face a dramatically elevated risk of kidney disease and premature death.

Conducted by the National Institutes of Health, the study was based on health surveys of more than 1,800 subjects who were monitored between 1965 and 2002. Researchers found that those subjects who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before the age of 20 were eight times more likely to have kidney disease in middle age.

In addition, childhood diabetics were twice as likely to die by middle age than their peers. The study added to a body of research warning against the dangers of childhood-onset type 2 diabetes.